Mida Solutions’ Andrea Sorze discusses Mida Lite Call Center and its compatibility with Microsoft
Caspar Herzberg |
Microsoft is one of the most relevant actors in the market and is pushing companies and organisations to migrate to cloud systems. Its brand-new intelligent communication platform Teams is a clear example of this and highlights Microsoft’s relevance, with investments in solution development, promotion and selling.
This new cloud-based platform will couple with the old (but still effective and reliable) one, Skype for Business, now designed to predominantly address on-premises installations.
The on-premises installations are not to be considered any less relevant or strategically important in terms of business incomes. There are millions of users worldwide still using Skype for Business who are not planning to move to Teams any time soon, both for economic and for geographical reasons. For example, these may be small and medium-sized enterprises that have invested in Skype for Business, companies that are operating in poor network coverage areas or those needing to manage calls locally for internal or international reasons.
At the end of the day, both Skype for Business and Teams are extremely useful platforms which help customers boost their communications with efficient call, conferencing and sharing tools. In the case of call centre needs, such as advanced call taking, interactive voice response systems, call queueing and smart distribution, it is possible to integrate the two platforms with third party solutions like Mida LiteCallCenter (LCC).
Mida LCC is a light-weight, cost-effective and complete solution that provides the call queueing and forwarding mechanisms needed to set up a call centre and manage incoming calls.
It enables users to forward calls to the desired operators or queue agents even in the case of multi-branch call centers. Users can also manage waiting time in a flexible manner with customisable call treatments and voice prompts. Each queue can have dedicated messages, working hours, timeouts, agents, overflows and routing algorithms (for example, skill-based, round-robin or idle-time).
Administration of LCC is performed through a web-based interface without needing to install dedicated clients. Users can receive incoming calls using standard internet protocol (SIP) phones or the Mida Operator Console, a web-based interface which provides basic (answer, hold/resume, transfer) and more advanced (park, camp, consult transfer) call handling functions. In addition, a dedicated Supervisor Console allows call centre managers to get a complete, real-time view of the ongoing activities and act upon queues and agents. Mida LCC and Operator Console require the presence of a session border controller to interface with the Microsoft environment, including Skype for Business or Teams.
These solutions are based on a single platform that supports all relevant communication technologies, due to its ‘umbrella approach’. Its extremely flexible architecture allows also users to deploy it on-premises, in the cloud or in a hybrid environment. As a result, it ensures deep and complete compatibility even in case of migration from Skype for Business to Teams, without any need to opt for new products.
Andrea Sorze is in the business development support team at Mida Solutions.